My first iPhone app

March 8, 2014 by usual

I am always having ideas for mobile apps but don’t have the time to learn to code to create one. I also spend lots of time with startups who are creating mobile apps and I have no direct experience of publishing and promoting an app which means I am relying on stuff I have read and stuff I have learn’t second hand. It was time to get some real world experience by building and publishing my own app. I will document my journey via blog posts.

Mobile App Idea?
My idea was a simple one, all car owners have a bunch of things they need to remember to do each year like MOT, TAX, Insure and service the car and lots of people forget. So the app automates reminders for all your cars, you never forget those important things again.

Which Mobile platform to launch on?
First choice was what platform do I build the app for to launch upon. Most startups publish iOS first and Android second with Windows and Blackberry not even a consideration, but when you look at the number of handsets using Android versus iOS there is no comparison, Android has significantly more.

The challenge with Android is that you have over 12,000 different devices to support which makes it almost impossible to test your app across all these devices. The biggest reason people don’t start with Android is that monetization of an app is much simpler on iOS. A Distimo report said that in April 2013, the Google Play vs. iOS app revenue balance stood at 27% to 73%, that is hugely significant.

The other factors that influenced my decision were iOS/iPhone’s are expensive devices and my app was for car owners so my assumption is that more iPhone owners will also be car owners than Android users. The second factor is that I have an iPhone so if I want to test it then it would need to be iOS. Decision made it would be iOS.